Padres Hire Omar Minaya
Maybe it wasn’t above-the-fold news, but Mets fans probably took notice: the San Diego Padres hired Omar Minaya last week. After interviewing with the Angels for the once-open general manager job, this might seem like a step back for Minaya. The fit might also seem strange, considering current Padres GM Josh Byrnes‘ pedigree in statistics-based analytics.
In the end, though, the move might be a great fit for Minaya. The hiring also represents a step forward for baseball.
Minaya’s duties as the senior vice president of baseball operations will include working with scouting (especially in Latin America) and giving input on trades. These are probably Minaya’s two strongest attributes.
Let’s take the last part first, though. Was Minaya good at trading? He has, perhaps, the worst baseball trade in modern history on his resume. When he sent Cliff Lee, Grady Sizemore, Brandon Phillips and Lee Stevens to the Indians for Bartolo Colon and Tim Drew, Minaya rewrote the way that every team looks at trade-deadline deals. Not in a good way. And even though he turned Colon into Orlando Hernandez and some spare parts following the Expos’ unsuccessful run at the wild card, he couldn’t soften the sting of that trade.
But then Minaya had his whole career as the Mets’ GM to undo that one trade. And he did: Mike Jacobs and Yusmeiro Petit for Carlos Delgado; Dante Brinkley and Gaby Hernandez for Paul LoDuca; Kris Benson for Jorge Julio and John Maine; Xavier Nady for Roberto Hernandez and Oliver Perez; Corey Coles and Ryan Meyers for Angel Pagan; Carlos Gomez, Deolis Guerra, Philip Humber and Kevin Mulvey for Johan Santana. These trades were all wins, and maybe the only player who got away was Heath Bell — whom Minaya dealt, along with Royce Ring, for Jon Adkins and Ben Johnson. Not quite Colon-Lee in the history books — none of them were — but the scale tilted back some while he was in New York.
Maybe his signings weren’t always the best ideas. The Perez, Pedro Martinez and Jason Bay deals -— and even the Santana signing -— were too many dollars and too many years. And some of his role players (Luis Castillo, Alex Cora and the like) were paid too much to be below replacement —- which, on veteran Mets teams, came back to bite him. On the other end, though, Carlos Beltran was worth almost every penny of his long-term deal; and the extensions to David Wright and Jose Reyes were well-timed.
Minaya might be best known for a couple poorly-handled firings near the end of his tenure in New York. In 2008, his front office put out news that they’d fired manager Willie Randolph at midnight on the East Coast. This left the team in some turmoil and led to the “Midnight Massacre” moniker. Later, Minaya was forced to call a press conference after firing Tony Bernazard, the team’s Vice President of Development, after Bernazard reportedly challenged Mets prospects to a physical fight. Adam Rubin, then of the New York Daily News, ran afoul of an obviously stressed-out Minaya during the presser. Minaya responded by questioning Rubin’s motives for his reporting, and insinuating that Rubin’s desire to work for the team had colored his analysis. Press relations are not Minaya’s strength.
But he won’t be responsible for signings or PR in San Diego. Instead, he’ll give background through his extensive contacts around the world. Scouting is his forte — he began his career as a scout in the Texas Rangers’ organization when they acquired Juan Gonzalez and Sammy Sosa — and that will help him fill his new role well.
As the assistant GM in New York, Minaya was involved Jose Reyes‘ signing out of the Dominican Republic. In fact, it was during this first tenure that the team drafted core of what would become the resurgent mid-2000s Mets. As the GM later, he made prominent signings out of Latin America, most notably giving Fernando Martinez $1.4 million in 2005. He also signed lefty Juan Urbina out of Venezuela for $1 million. Sure, maybe only one of the three players paid a decent return, but there’s no denying that Minaya has strong contacts in the region.
In the press conference, Byrnes focused on this aspect, saying that Minaya would take international trips to bolster scouting efforts. He also lauded Minaya for his knowledge: “He knows the job, he’s very networked, he knows about players, he knows about deals.”
This isn’t a buddy hire. This isn’t some sort of sinecure, a golden parachute for a baseball lifer. Minaya was linked to the Blue Jays and to the Indians before the Padres made their move. That’s three teams with established analytical bents, all interested in Minaya’s skills.
What we have here is a case of “everything old is new again.” Minaya’s strengths fall in line with an old-school approach: know your players, know their backgrounds and know their skills. Minaya can make a phone call with someone on each front, and he’s fluent in that language. He’s shown a subjective ability to evaluate trades from this angle, as well. If Byrnes and his staff are confident of their ability to break down the numbers, why not add someone with strengths that lie elsewhere?
In other words, if numbers are the new norm, perhaps scouting, background and subjectivity can once again give a team an edge.
Sounds like to me that Minaya had the typical thing happen- get promoted until you finally reach a job your skills don’t match, then get fired. If this puts him back in his wheelhouse, that has got to be a good thing.
This is something I agree with strongly.
Otherwise known (for the past 40 years) as the “Peter Principle.” It’s probably no more prevalent in baseball front offices than it is in any other major corporation, but outcomes at the top of the org are far more publicly obvious.
Ahhh, yes. I couldn’t remember the term at the time I wrote it. Indeed. This.
It’s called “the Peter Principle.” I happen to love the concept.
“Minaya’s duties as the senior vice president of baseball operations will include working with scouting (especially in Latin America) and giving input on trades. These are probably Minaya’s two strongest attributes.”
LOL at input on trades being a strength, and LOL at his scouting ability. For the former, his pathetic record of getting pickpocketed is well documented and includes gems such as Cliff Lee, Grady Sizemore and Brandon Phillips for a couple months of Bartolo Colon, and trading Heath Bell for nothing because Bell clearly didnt have the guts to close.
The latter is a lie repeated so often that even intelligent people are starting to believe it. His record as a scout, and specifically the Mets record of international scouting under his tenure, is deplorable.
Both of those trades are mentioned in the piece, but I don’t think we can continue to flog him for those two trades. Every GM has some trades that don’t work out, and Bell was just a reliever — other than the Bell trade, he won almost every single one of his trades in New York. That says something to me, even if the highest profile one didn’t work out.
As for his record on international signings, you obviously don’t give him any credit for Jose Reyes or even Sosa and Gonzalez. And yes, Urbina and Martinez didn’t work out. But his teams have always been very active in the international market, and so therefore he has the contacts there, and experience. He hasn’t actually been a scout since the late eighties either.
He won’t be inking the prospect. He won’t be making the trades. But he will be picking up the phone and talking to people about the prospects age and background. And he will be talking to the scouts about the prospective acquisition’s skills and makeup.
I’m with you on how I feel about Minaya in general. His flaws really pulled the Mets into a place that they are struggling to get out of.
I’m not with you in feeling that Minaya doesn’t have value to add to a tight sabermetric-leaning ship of a front office. I think FO types agree, considering the jobs he was considering.
Juan Urbina isn’t a bust at all. He’s still barely 18 years old. The stuff is all still there; he got hammered when the Mets asked him to throw his changeup more often.
Wait a minute, Salderson. Check to see if the page fully loaded for you. You seem to only have been able to read the first three paragraphs. If you hit the refresh, you will see that there are another ten or so paragraphs after the point you apparently were forced to stop reading. Sarris addresses both trades you brought up and says pretty much what you said. They were bad trades. He made some good trades too. Sarris is contending that these good trades make up for the horrible trades. Feel free to disagree, but once you hit refresh you will see that your point was addressed.
Good catch – I saw that the Colon abomination was mentioned but I scanned through after that. In my defense, I am handicapped by a debilitating ADD, and I tend to fly into a rage whenever people talk about Minaya as a great scout (typically they will point to Tatis as evidence, while ignoring ten Burgos’s or Bosticks for each one fleeting success).
Every GM has a horrible trade on their resume. I think everyone believes that the situation in Montreal forced the huge overpay for Colon (and the Indians gave away Phillips for nothing later).
Look at Jon Daniels of the Rangers, who is considered a top GM. His trade of Adrian Gonzalez and Chris Young for Adam Eaton and a reliever was absolutely horrendous – he received the older, more expensive starting pitcher and threw in what turned out to be his team’s best 1B.
But he also brought in Neftali Feliz, Elvis Andrus, Matt Harrison and Jarrod Saltalamacchia for a couple of months of Teixeira. So I think we can’t be too rude on Daniels.
Love reading the rants of DUMB overweight white boys on the internet. Until this year, the last GM to make the Nats a contender was Omar Minaya. The Mets broke attendance records for Shea, had the best record in the NL from 2005-2008, and were the best team in baseball in 2006, under the direction of Omar Minaya. This year, The Amazin Minayas are on their way to a playoff spot if some of Omar’s kids in the minors wind up supporting the POS bullpen Balderson has created with Jose Reyes’ money. If Harvey, Mejia and perhaps Beato come up to support the pen in the 2nd half of the season, we might be witnessing something special. ALL because of Omar Minaya!
I was hoping to see a little more on his actual scouting history, as his GM tenure is pretty well (or at least more well) known. If the summation of it comes down to “he had a hand in Jose Reyes, Juan Gonzalez, and Sammy Sosa” consider me unimpressed. I mean, we would laud a team for signing a guy to their analytics department who was citing their analytic methodology from 1986 (ie. when the Rangers acquired Gonzalez).
That said, I think the Minaya signing is much ado about nothing.
Not laud. You get the idea.
Assigning credit for a scouted player is pretty much impossible. Even if we had access to the actual scouting reports, it took a scouting director and a GM to sign off on those reports, and even some consensus with other scouts. As for the ado, eh — I haven’t seen anyone else even mention this really.
I get the difficulty in assigning credit, which is partially why I’m skeptic that there’s anything we can actually hang our hats on as a reason why Minaya is a good scout/asset for the Padres. Even finding Jose Reyes was somewhat of a fluke, as he only showed up to the Mets facility because Pedro Martinez was there*. And apparently he was tipped off on Sammy Sosa by another scout**. There are no Pedro Martinez’s on the San Diego Padres to help attract talent to our facilities, and the only thing we can say with certainty for Minaya is that he was a complete and utter failure as a GM wherever he has been.
* – http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/sports/features/11260/
** – http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/sports/features/11260/index2.html
@Marver:
Or on the flip side:
1. “he was tipped off on Sammy Sosa by another scout” – Networking!
2. “only showed up to the Mets facility because Pedro Martinez was there” – Looks like Pedro earned his contract after all.
I tire of seeing trades mentioned without the contracts associated with the players. You don’t trade players! You trade contracts! If I trade my 15 million dollar house with a 15 million dollar mortgage for a free and clear $100,000 house, was that a good trade for me? You bet it was. But if this were reported like baseball trades are reported, all you would read is, “10,000 sq foot mansion in Beverly Hills” traded for a 1,500 sq foot tract house in Columbus Ohio.”
Whenever I see a bunch of people remarking on a trade of Player A for Player B, I wonder how many of those people know the player contracts. If you don’t, you would have no idea of the value of the trade for either team.
Is Pujols a good trade for Mark Ellis? Hoe about Halliday for Edwin Jackson? How would anyone know without knowing (and analyzing) their contracts?
I think you’re oversimplifying in the other direction. Your house analogy doesn’t work because you’re taking the quality of the house (player) out of the argument and only placing value on the money involved. As much as baseball is a business, I think every baseball exec. will tell you that the risk of aquiring a great player is usually worth the cost. Winning is good for business, and having a productive star player is also good for business.
When Minaya made these trades, the Mets were trying to win a championship pretty much every year, and their ownership was willing to spend, so expensive acquisitions like Delgado, LoDuca, and Santana went along with their gameplan. Look a little deeper and you see the Marlins picked up $7 mil of Delgado’s remaining $44 mil, and he hit 100 HR in 3 years for the Mets on that contract. That’s about $12mil a year for a guy who got MVP consideration. (Picking up the $12mil club option in 2009 is a different story.) He dumped all $15mil of Kris Benson’s remaining contract on the Orioles. And how about $6mil a year for a productive Paul LoDuca? Doesn’t seem like he did too bad.
Bobby, the value of a player is still his expected WAR minus his contract value in dollars. Period. If you want to argue whether a team should overpay for a great player or not, for whatever reasons, that is a completely separate issue.
The reason the house analogy is perfect is this: If you trade the large house for the smaller one, you can simply sell the smaller one, pocket the $100,000 and go out and buy another 15 mil house and slap a 15 million dollar loan on it, costing you nothing.
Now, if you want to argue that, like a 15 million dollar player, a 15 million dollar house is hard to find for any price, then that is a completely different story, as I said.
Do you know that there is no evidence that great players command more dollars per win than average or worse players? That kind of puts holes in the old refrain about the scarcity of great players. If they are so scarce, then they should command more money (per win), due to supply and demand. They don’t. Why? Because the market realizes that there really is no distinction between a great player and an average one. You can purchase 2 or 3 average players or a great one – your option, same net result.
So, again, you can argue that in a particular circumstance a team should or does overpay for a great player. Again, that is a separate argument from my thesis. Regardless of your or any other argument under the sun, it is IMPOSSIBLE to discuss the value of a trade without explicitly discussing the contracts involved. That really should be obvious. That should be as obvious as if I offer to sell my house to you and I tell you that my sale includes any encumbrances I have on the house. Are you going to discuss the price without finding out what those encumbrances are? I would hope not for your sake…
You’re still not taking into account the quality of the given player, just the price of their contract. Now you’re also assuming that any player can be flipped at any time for any other player if their stupid infallible WAR is equal. If you were a GM you’d have a team full of minimum-wage guys all getting .5 WAR, and man you’d be getting good value.
When GMs are talking about multimillion dollar contracts and $100mil+ payrolls, the difference between $3mil/year and $4 mil/year for a given player probably doesn’t matter. Any good GM would gladly overpay for better production. I’m not saying the contract isn’t important, it’s just not nearly as important as how they expect the player to perform.
“You’re still not taking into account the quality of the given player, just the price of their contract.”
I don’t know what you are talking about. The value of a player is his TALENT times the going rate for that level of salary (currently around 4-5 million per win) minus his salary. That is his equity. When you make a trade, you trade equities. Period. As I said (3 times now), if you want to make an argument for spending more or less money on a particular player, that is a separate issue.
Do you think that Philly would trade Pabelbon straight up for Craig Kimbrel? They would not only do that, but they would give Atlanta a boatload of cash as well. It doesn’t matter who you think is the better closer. It’s not even close. Papelbon has zero equity. He’s being paid around market value, maybe more. His contract has zero value. He’s like a house which is mortgaged to the hilt. Kimbrel, on the other hand, because he is still a slave, is only making 400 some odd thousand (I don’t know when he’s eligible for arb). His equity, and thus the value of his contract, is roughly 10-12 million (assuming that we value everyone by FA dollars, which doesn’t have to be the case) per year (at least until he hits arb, then it will be less, but still a lot). Over the next 4 years, Kimbrel’s equity is probably something like 30-40 million dollars (the difference between his expected salary and that of a FA player with similar talent).
So, Philly would probably pay 20 or 20 million dollars in a second in order to trade Paps for Kimbrel straight up, as long as they thought that they were around the same talent over the next 4 years. And even if they thought Kimbrel was worse, they would still pay 15 or 20 million.
So 5 or 10 (or 20) years from now, if we heard that Philly traded Pabelbon for Kimbrel straight up, and someone wanted to evaluate that trade, they would NEED to know those player’s salaries. If they did know them, they would conclude that Philly made the greatest trade (and ATL the stupidest) probably in the history of baseball (without the benefit of hindsight).
You bet. Analyzing trades any other way is absurd, so acontextual that it’s pointless to discuss it much further. To say that Minaya got Carlos Delgado! for players who didn’t turn into anything without noting that the Mets also picked up Delgado’s salary (and in fact blew the signing the previous year, giving the Marlins a year of Delgado for all of $4m) is either actionable carelessness or flat out intellectual dishonesty.
Anyway–the idea that Minaya is any kind of judge of talent is ludicrous on its face. This is the guy who prior to the 2010 season brought to the Mets 25 man roster–voluntarily, mind you–three of the five worst players in the game. He thought Gary Matthews, Jr., and Mike Jacobs were still ballplayers, for God’s sake.
Minaya took a brilliant Mets core and surrounded it with guys who couldn’t play. The story wasn’t that the 2007 and 2008 Mets lost by a hair, it’s that it took an extraordinary amount of GM incompetence to surround that core with so much dross that they were even in a division race in the first place.
The article is the worst sort of flacking, and truth bending.
I don’t think I was asserting that he was a good GM, check the first comment for the way I was headed. As a Mets fan I would never assert that.
So this was never meant to be a decision rendered upon all of his trades. Yeah it would be nice if the contract value was in there for all of the 20something trades I listed — preferably in today’s dollars, with WAR for each before and after the trade — but I don’t think that was the point.
I know, I did say he won most of those trades, mostly because the prospects didn’t turn out, but that was more to soften the fact that I would believe that most people would feel that he had no acumen whatsoever, no value to a current franchise. Most of those trades were prospects for veterans with big contracts, as a general statement. He just had to make sure he didn’t give away another Sizemore or Phillips. He didn’t.
The point was more that Minaya is versed in the old school, in scouting, and in Latin America, and has connections that are valuable. The Padres bought that perspective and those contacts. Not necessarily his PR or business skills.
The Padres don’t have to listen when he tells them to go get Jacobs (whom he also traded away) or sign an over-the-hill role player. I’m sure they won’t.
“Yeah it would be nice if the contract value was in there for all of the 20something trades I listed..”
Eno, again, contracts CANNOT be discussed, evaluated, whatever you want to do with them, without including the contracts. There is no point whatsoever in discussing them. What if a GM got prospects in various trades and all of them didn’t pan out? Does that tell us anything about those trades or that GM? No! Maybe he traded away no equity in order to get those prospects. If I were able to trade away all of my bad contracts (contracts with negative equity) and receive prospects that never panned out, I would be the greatest GM in history!
You can’t talk about trades without the exact contracts. Period. I don’t know how else to state what should be completely obvious.
Got it. If my intent had been to evaluate all the trades Minaya had ever made I would have done what you said. It’s certainly the first thing I do whenever I analyze a trade here.
I would say my intent was more to summarize his history and move on to his fit with the Padres. I figured that the trades were mostly similar enough (prospects for veterans) that listing the Mets trades might add value. Guess not.
Don’t let them get you down, Enos. The article was about the Padres hiring Omar, not a comprehensive breakdown of every Omar Minaya trade according to MGL’s formula.
What I took from the article is that Omar was comfortable trading relievers and prospects, and perhaps overvalues big-name veterans. He also likes to take chances on former highly touted prospects (generally the toolsy ones too) and has a good eye for reclamation projects.
Though I should point out he also
“lost” the Matt Lindstrom/Henry Owens for Jason Vargas trade, as well as the J.J. Putz trade (of which Vargas was a piece).
And as a Mets fan, I’m still upset that he traded Billy Wagner to the Red Sox for Chris Carter (the bad one) and a minor leaguer, when they could’ve kept him, offered him arbitration (which we would’ve refused, since they had signed K-Rod), and then gotten a first round draft pick. Instead, the Red Sox got him for the playoffs and the Braves first-round pick (20th overall) when he refused arbitration. Not that MGL’s contract advice would’ve been helpful in evaluating that trade, since the Mets traded away a negative asset for prospects.
“You can’t talk about trades without the exact contracts”
Completely untrue. You can sum all the contracts into one big money transfer, which would give you plenty of idea of the cash/responsibility transfer without needing to know every little detail. We care about service time and we care about total monetary obligations. But do we care if a guy gets an extra 200k for an MVP vote? Probably not in this context. No need to list everyone’s EXACT contract.
Even with my minimal approach, we don’t even need this:
Silva ($25m/3yr) + $9m for Bradley ($21m/2yr)
Instead, we can use:
Silva (3) +$5m for Bradley (2)
And there’s your trade. Was that so painful? Did we need everyone’s EXACT contract? No, of course not. Does it get mildly more complicated if there are options? Sure. But in that case, you can easily enumerate the slight variations onto this via things like decision trees that are commonly used in economics.
“In other words, if numbers are the new norm, perhaps scouting, background and subjectivity can once again give a team an edge.”
Scouting, background and subjectivity have always been more important than quantitative analysis. Every executive worth their weight in salt will tell you this. Scouting is still the norm and numbers are still the edge.
Hey, they could have hired someone worse.
True. Dayton Moore was probably available for the right price.
Wait, didn’t Moore win The Contest?
So we’re going to:
- Ignore that when the Colon trade happened, the Expos were well on their way out of Montreal and a team controlled by Major League Baseball.
- Ignore that several of his signing outperformed their cost, including but not limited to RA Dickey, Angel Pagan, Jon Niese, Ike Davis, Mike Pelfrey, Jeurys Familia, Matt Harvey, etc, in addition to bringing Jose Reyes to the Mets and stopping them from trading David Wright?
The Mets refused to pay over slot. In Minaya’s time, this was equivalent to putting him in a basket ball game with one hand tied behind his back. Given the resources he was given to build a minor league system, he was incredibly successful.
- The LARGE majority of Mets fans wanted Oliver Perez signed and felt the price was quite reasonable, particularly given the success he had against the Braves during his first year. His price was extremely reasonable given his resume. Compare that contract to Jaret Wright (Yankees), Carl Pavano (Yankees), AJ Burnett (Yankees), Edwin Jackson (Yet to be announced), Kevin Millwood, etc.
Any veteran arms, particularly high upside arms that produce Ks, are due at least one 20-40 million dollar contract. Given how rare it is for pitchers to survive the minors and the arbitration period with even league average performance, the ones that “make it” need to be paid.
Perez had the added marketability of success in big games, particularly against the Braves during his first season with the Mets. He was a wild card signing and everyone knew it. If you want to acquire an arm with lower risk, it costs at least double what Perez was paid, and you still bear a ton of risk.
- Pedro had to be overpaid. The Mets were an afterthought when Minaya took over. As a team in the biggest baseball market in the world, this was disgraceful. Everyone knew they had to make a huge PR move, and that’s what Pedro was.
Sure he wasn’t “Pedro”, but he was pretty close at times. I was at Shea for 3 of his starts during his first season with the Mets. We hadn’t felt that kind of electricity in the park since Gooden. I’m not kidding. He could fart and the crowd went berzerk. This after we endured the “Steve Trachsel era” (aka baseball torture).
Beltran offered to sign with the Yankees for 2/3 of what the Mets paid him. That’s how bad it was to be a Met at the time. The value of this signing doesn’t show up in the stat sheets, which is where you stat heads go wrong in these evaluations. This signing was absolutely necessary.
Pedro energized the fan base in a way that few could. The marketing value of this signing alone was well worth the money. The fact that he actually played some baseball was just gravy.
What he did for the Mets was a fleeting glimpse in his career, but it was one we desperately needed.
This is what it is. The public decides a narrative it wants and fills in the gaps to make it so. Minaya is a latin kid from the streets playing in a white man’s world. He has no shot at an objective evaluation where there is the slightest ambiguity.
Minaya is an extremely talented scout and it showed in the extremely low cost high upside acquisitions he made. There were misses, but that’s the nature of the game when you deal with the variance in baseball. One Angel Pagan or Jon Niese makes up for 4 Luis Castillos (who actually had a babip induced successful season).
None of this matters because we live in a world where there is no penalty for stupidity, and vanity trumps accountability. I just figured if you guys want to pretend to understand this topic of discussion, you should pay some homage to what actually happened.
There’s a reason that even with his negative image amongst internet monkeys, lots of teams still want this guy. He will add more value to the Padres than most of the free agent acquisitions we will see this offseason. This was a huge pick up for the Padres.
If we believed your narrative, then every bad move Minaya has even made was because he HAD to. He HAD to trade away Cliff Lee, Brandon Philips, Grazy Sizemore, and Lee Stevens for a rental, and he HAD to overpay for Pedro and Carlos Beltran. You didn’t even mention the Jason Bay or KRod debacles, which were signed after a 97 win season, or Johan’s albatross of a contract. And then there was the questions surrounding the firing of multiple coaches, and a tussle with a beat writer.
But of course this is my narrative because he’s “a latin kid from the streets playing in a white man’s world”. Excuse me while I go pick more internet bananas.
Not immediately after a 97 win season; that could be confusing. Meant that the Mets had regained respectability and that was no longer a viable excuse for overpaying (as if it was a viable excuse to begin with).
I agree with Puffy 100%. B N hit it right on the head. The man lacked the skillset to be a great all around GM. There’s no denying that. He was a PR nightmare and his handling of the Randolph and Bernazard firings was comical. With all that said, for anyone to say that the guy brings nothing to the table is a joke. I guess Brian Sabean must be a useless piece of sht since he once traded Liriano, Nathan, and Bonser for Pierzynski. How about Pat Gillick? He traded Gavin Floyd and Go Gonzalez for Freddy Garcia. He also traded Bobby Abreu for C.J Henry, Jesus Sanchez, and Matt Smith. How about Curt Schilling for Travis Lee, Omar Daal, Vicente Padilla and Nelson Figueroa? Yeah that Gillick must have been a piece of garbage that couldn’t possibly help anyone’s FO in any capacity
To use a football analogy, take head coaches. Wade Phillips was, by most accounts, a lousy head coach at multiple stops including Dallas, Buffalo and Denver. He got those HC opportunities….Because he’s a brilliant defensive coordinator! It seems fairly obvious to me that for Minaya to ascend the ranks and eventually get not one, but two GM gigs, he was clearly doing something right.
“Even finding Jose Reyes was somewhat of a fluke, as he only showed up to the Mets facility because Pedro Martinez was there*. ”
Your timeline is off a bit… That article wasn’t about Reyes. Reyes was in the Mets system since 2000 Pedro didn’t come to the Mets in 2005 that article was also written in 05.